I know you're making a good faith argument, but you're twisting the definition of regressive. For example, if a country has one citizen with an income of 1 trillion, and one hundred thousand citizens with an income of $10,000 each, the trillionaire would still pay over 99% of taxes even if taxes were proportional.
The point is that with severe income inequality, it is fair that the super rich pay a very, very high proportion of taxes. The 40.4% seems high for the "top 1%" of the population, but if you replace "top 1%" with their actual average income, the comparison is less misleading.
I know you're making a good faith argument, but you're twisting the definition of regressive. For example, if a country has one citizen with an income of 1 trillion, and one hundred thousand citizens with an income of $10,000 each, the trillionaire would still pay over 99% of taxes even if taxes were proportional.
The point is that with severe income inequality, it is fair that the super rich pay a very, very high proportion of taxes. The 40.4% seems high for the "top 1%" of the population, but if you replace "top 1%" with their actual average income, the comparison is less misleading.